17 dead after bus falls into ravine in Bolivia

A bus fell 200 metres into a ravine, leaving 17 people dead after a collision involving two trucks, Bolivian police said on Monday.

The bus was attempting to overtake a truck on Sunday night when it crashed head-on into another to the north of La Paz, police chief Yuri Calderon said.

"That's why the vehicle lost control and went over the cliff (falling) 200 meters and producing the death of 17 people," said Calderon.

He said the number of wounded was being counted and some of those had been transferred to La Paz while firefighters were working at the scene.

Rescuers descended the precipice on a rope and brought up the victims and survivors one by one, television images on the Unitel channel showed.

The bus, operated by Totai, was traveling north from La Paz, the administrative capital, to the Amazon town of Rurrenabaque.

Bolivia has a sorry record when it comes to deadly bus accidents. Already this year, 22 people died when two buses collided in January on the road between the southern regions of Oruro and Potosi.

The very next day 12 people died after a bus careered over a cliff edge close to the city of Sucre in south-central Bolivia.

And in February, 24 people died in an accident between a bus and a truck in Oruro.